


I Wanna Be Loved

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Bi Hawkeye, Closeted Character, Heteronormativity is a Hell of a Drug, M/M, Oblivious Trapper, lavender marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-17 15:52:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17563475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Trapper and Louise have an Arrangement, which is great. Security, family, and a few other quiet agreements.Before Korea, he wasn't sure he'd ever take advantage of her understanding-- but then, before Korea, he didn't know himself half as well as she knew him from the start.





	1. Merely Holding Conversation

    Louise was the first girl who really ever meant something to him. Before her, there hadn’t been a whole lot of opportunities with any kind of girls at all. The closest thing to a girl he was likely to see from first grade through high school was either a nun or Frankie C. Harrigan, and he’s pretty sure thinking about either of those options as a girl would have counted as a sin.

 

    Anyway, it always pissed him off when guys treated Frankie like that. He was kind of small and he had _hips_ , the poor bastard, and he had big blue eyes with long eyelashes, and they went to an all boys’ school. And Frankie was a good sport about it most of the time on account of he couldn’t help being pretty and the guys who teased him weren’t ever gonna try it on with him for reals or anything, but it pissed Trapper off just the same, because Frankie was a great guy and a great friend, and the guys who called him dollface and pinched his ass sometimes just saw him as the closest thing to a pretty face, they didn’t know how smart or how funny he was or anything.

 

    He got in a lot of fights between age ten and age sixteen, defending Frankie Harrigan’s honor, such as it was. Somewhere around sixteen, Frankie stopped looking so much like a girl and guys quit teasing him, but by then Trapper had got to be a pretty damn good boxer-- and pretty damn good at patching himself up after fights, though it was always a little nicer having someone else do some of the patching-up. Well… it was always a little nicer when he and Frankie were sort of patching each other up, it was a lot less nice if he came home looking a mess and his ma caught him out.

 

    When the two of them got to college, that’s when a whole new world opened up. _Girls_. Not that they had any idea what to do with ‘em when they got ‘em, but you can’t let that stop you, or so they figured. Frankie went girl-crazy with very little provocation, and girls were crazy right back at him, and that was fine. Well, it wasn’t great. All the stuff Trapper wanted to do together was suddenly kids’ stuff, and the only real thing there was to do in all the world was to get a girl, if you could, and go as far as she would let you. He tried, no one could say he wasn’t trying all the time, but it didn’t seem the same.

 

    Trapper went with a couple girls just one or two times, girls Frankie set him up with, but they weren’t much fun. Every time they went on double dates, it seemed a little unsatisfactory, somehow. Kissing was nice, in theory, but he never liked getting lipstick all over his face, and he never really could understand what girls wanted.

 

    He met Louise after a boxing match. Him and another guy from the college’s boxing club. A real good-looking son of a gun, that was what scared him about it going in, ‘cause a boxer with a pretty face is a boxer who doesn’t take a whole lot of hits to it, but he’d won somehow. And Louise had been with a group of girls ringside, all of ‘em hollering and cheering, and afterwards she’d come right up to him. He’d liked that. How direct she was, and how she knew her stuff. About boxing, and about a lot of other things, besides. She started coming to all his matches, sometimes with her girlfriends and sometimes with a boy named Billy, but she’d doubled over laughing when he’d asked if Billy was her boyfriend or something. More like brother and sister, she’d said. He wouldn’t have blamed her for going with him if she had been, slyly funny, striking looking, with his pale skin and dark hair, and eyes that seemed to look right through you. He wouldn’t have blamed her, but he was more relieved than he’d expected to be when he learned she wasn’t. Sometimes they did things the three of them, and sometimes he got her all to himself.

 

    He’d decided right away she was the one for him. She didn’t get lipstick on him when they kissed, and kissing her was pretty nice, but things started feeling weird sometimes when they’d try and go farther than that. A lifetime of Catholic guilt, he figured, not that he’d ever been too bothered by a lot of talk about sin. He was pretty immune to it-- or so he’d thought-- after the time he and the guys got caught with a handful of french postcards and the big lecture they got about that. The postcards had been exciting, if a little vague and small and hard to make much out of in places. But it wasn’t really about being able to make out the details, it was about the rulebreaking and the shared secret. And some of what you could make out in the pictures was exciting, too, sure. With Louise, there was finally the chance to uncover some of those mysteries, things pictures couldn’t give a full idea of, but neither of them much took to it.

 

    It wasn’t bad or anything. It just wasn’t what guys seemed to talk about when they talked about making it with a girl. It was kind of a relief, when Louise told him it was okay if he didn’t try to get in her pants all the time and they could still go out and have a good time. They still kissed sometimes, they just agreed to save the rest for if they got married, and maybe that’s all he needed. Maybe he was just a little susceptible to the old guilt after all. Anyway, it didn’t take them long to decide on marriage. They wanted the same things out of life. They wanted kids. There wasn’t any other girl he thought he wanted to spend his time with the way he wanted to spend his time with Louise. When they’d told their friends about it, everyone was happy for them, even with how soon it all happened-- Frankie’d promised to throw him one hell of a bachelor party (teased him about it when he hadn’t even cared about looking at any girls who weren’t Louise, told him he wasn’t married just yet), and Billy had said if Louise didn’t marry Trapper, he would (and that approval had made him feel warm for days after).

 

    Somehow, he’d thought on their wedding night, it would all just work out.

 

    It didn’t, but… that was okay, too. There was nothing wrong with it, there was nothing wrong with her. There was nothing wrong with him, either. They just didn’t seem to fit together in bed the way they fit at everything else. They could have a great time going out to a football game, or going dancing, and then come home and either have a good time cuddled up on the sofa, or a kind of a lousy time in bed, doing the one thing that was supposed to be more fun than anything else.

 

    They stopped trying, after they had their second kid. Louise had whispered to him, the two of them lying in bed, that maybe it was okay if they never liked this one thing with each other.

   

    “We could see other people, in secret.” She had told him. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I love you, you’re my best friend, but I’ve just been thinking. About other women. You’ve thought the same thing, haven’t you?”

 

    He hadn’t known about that. He’d kissed her forehead, and told her he’d think about it, and probably just go with whatever she thought would make them both happy. If she thought he needed to see other women, well… maybe. He thought about whether it would make him mad, her being with another man, but it didn’t. It was a little weird, maybe, because he never knew her to look at any other men. She didn’t even think much of any movie stars, and even he could say if a guy in the movies was handsome. She read those magazines sometimes, same ones her friends read, but she always kind of scoffed when they started swooning over guys.

 

    It felt kind of good, thinking about how she didn’t have eyes for anyone else, but if another guy could make _her_ feel good in a way he couldn’t, it didn’t have to change anything. If there was a girl out there he could make things work with, as long as she understood his wife was his wife, the mother of his daughters, that he wasn’t planning on leaving her, maybe that would be fine.

 

    Sometimes, when he thought about another man with her, it wasn’t just that he wasn’t upset, it was that he was kind of turned on a little.

 

    A couple days later, when she asked if he’d thought about other men, he’d admitted he’d liked the thought. She’d kissed him and told him she loved him, that they both deserved to stop lying to themselves and be happy, that she was so glad she’d married the one swell guy who understood completely. He wasn’t so sure he did understand, but he trusted her.

 

    Once, he came home for lunch and she had a friend over, one she’d introduced with a bright grin and a reminder of their new Arrangement, and he’d found himself unable to think about trying something with some understanding friend of hers. He’d excused himself and left them the rest of the day, gone back to work. Told her that night he was still warming up to trying to find someone, but not to worry about him, and that seemed fine. She hadn’t been upset about his ducking out in a hurry. She’d just kissed his cheek and thanked him for being himself.

 

    It wasn’t long after that he got the draft, and now he finds himself kissing his girls goodbye at the train station, still thinking about everything they’d discussed, wondering whether he was meant to find something while they were apart, wondering whether he wants to.

 

    He guesses he does. He’ll be overseas, lonely… it’ll be normal, he thinks. A lot of married guys probably do the same, and at least he’s got permission from his wife.

 

    He slides into an empty seat, and comes face to face with the bluest eyes he’s ever seen. Eyes like the perfect summer sky, eyes that put any other pair to shame, and if those eyes were set into a more female face, maybe he’d forget his hesitation and start making a move right away.

 

    “Going my way?” The guy asks, a wry smile covering what looks like a pretty rotten case of nerves-- about the same as Trapper’s feeling himself, he’d guess.

 

    “Sure am, soldier.”

 

    “Oh, boy, call me anything but ‘soldier’.” He shudders. “You can call me ‘doc’-- you can call me ‘grumpy’ and ‘sleepy’, for that matter, you can even call me ‘dopey’. You can call me a cab, you can even call me late for dinner if it comes to it, but don’t call me ‘soldier’.”

 

    Trapper likes him. He thinks he likes him more than anybody.

 

    “Doc, huh? Me, too. Doctor John McIntyre.” He leans across the space between them to offer his hand. “You can call me ‘Trapper’.”

 

    “There’s a story behind that.”

 

    “Sure, you might even get it out of me one of these days.”

 

    “Doctor Benjamin Pierce.” He takes Trapper’s hand, he’s warm and lingering with it, and maybe it should feel over-familiar, like the kind of handshake you give an old friend, but it doesn’t. It just feels human. They’ve barely begun going through the grinder, but already he can tell he’s going to need human. “You can actually call me ‘Hawkeye’.”

 

    “There a story behind that?”

 

    “Not much of one.”

 

    They trade stories, on the train ride across the country-- stories about nicknames, stories about school, stories about family. Trapper moves across to Hawkeye’s side after a while, they sit shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee and they fall asleep on each other, and they tell so many jokes… There are other stops, they pick up other guys shipping out, and eventually they’ve got company taking up the seats across from them, guys who must imagine the two of them are old friends with the way they pick up a rhythm of talking together.

 

    By the time they get on the plane, he knows he likes Hawkeye more than anybody. He thinks he likes him as much as he likes his wife.

 

    He’s not sure what he would have done, his first time in the MASH unit’s OR, if they hadn’t wound up together. It’s not like any experience he’s had in his career so far. He gets through it, they both do, they all do. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do and he doesn’t like knowing he’ll just have to do it all over again, but he guesses this is his life now and he doesn't have to like it.

 

    He and Hawkeye wind up sitting on the ground in their tent, leaned back against his cot and in against each other, huddled against the world. Staring blankly at the canvas ahead.

 

    “You know, I never lost a patient before.” Hawkeye says, his voice strangely void of emotion.

 

    “We’re gonna lose a lot more.” Trapper answers, surprised his own is the same.

 

    “Yeah. Before this war’s done, I guess we will.”

 

    “I hate this.”

 

    Hawkeye’s head tips over towards him and he leans to meet him.

 

    “Me too, Trap. I-- I--”

 

    “Yeah.”

 

    “I never lost a patient before.” He repeats, and this time there’s emotion in it, he sounds so lost and so small, and Trapper would do anything to fix it, but there’s nothing that _will_. He knows, because there’s nothing that’s going to erase that feeling from his own heart, either.

 

    “Neither have I. Haven’t been a surgeon long enough to. Everyone does, I know that. They tell you in med school, it’ll happen. I just always thought… I always thought it’d be-- I thought I’d be able to go home to my wife, at least. I thought I’d go home at the end of the day. And Louise’d say ‘what’s the matter with you?’-- that’s how she’d say it, but once I told her, she’d… she’d tell me to take a load off, and she’d bring me a drink…”

 

    “I’d die for a drink.” Hawkeye groans. His hand fumbles its way into Trappers, and Trapper squeezes. It helps.

 

    “She’d tell me it happens. She’d rub my shoulders. I’d hug my little girls. Life would go on. This isn’t what I thought anything would be like, I guess.”

 

    “I always thought… I thought I’d call my dad. And he’d tell me it happens, no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you try. And I’d have that drink, and go to sleep. I can’t even sleep.”

 

    “Here. Shift over.” Trapper says, and he starts in on Hawkeye’s shoulders.

 

    “Wow, you’ve got great hands…”

 

    “Mother always said I should be a surgeon.”

 

    The laugh that earns is small and weak, but it’s a laugh, it’s a _win_. It makes his own pain a little lighter to bear. Can you say that to a guy, that his laugh makes life livable? It sounds so… needy, or too intimate. It sounds like too much. But all his fears about coming over here, all the nerves that had started up in his gut when he’d got that letter, they all calmed down the first time he heard Hawkeye laugh. Nothing can be that bad, if Hawk’s laughing. Nothing he can’t survive.

 

    “I’ll get you.” Hawkeye promises. “In a minute.”

 

    “Sure.” He nods, but he doesn’t really care about that. It just seemed like something he could do, and it feels nice doing it. Reminds him of college-- the boxing club, the football team, guys who got to be real sore and exhausted trading massages after getting beat up and tired out, the point of pride it was to be the set of hands that were most fought over. He’d always liked doing it. Figured it wasn’t so different from any of the other ways he found he just wanted to make people feel better. The strange sort of pleasure in it, the feel of muscle beneath his hands and how good it always is to take that muscle from taut and knotted up to loose and relaxed. The warmth of skin, the human-ness of it, the camaraderie it all built. It felt good to be on the receiving end, sure, but it felt special to be the one doing it.

 

    Right now, hurting like they both have been, it feels special to do this for Hawkeye. Maybe more than it ever has. No one’s ever needed comfort from him like this. He’s never been much good at it, he doesn’t think-- not with words. But he’s good with his hands.

 

    They’re alone-- he’s not sure why that’s important, except he guesses he doesn’t want to have to offer Frank the same treatment, or defend the massage for what it is. It’s not like ‘alone’ was ever a necessity back in college, when he’d have guys lined up. It’s different, though-- the guys from sports teams, there was an understanding of what the thing was and wasn’t, and Frank’s always looking for signs of degeneracy. He’d see all kinds of things that aren’t…

 

    He’d think there was something funny about it, which is so stupid it doesn’t even merit arguing about. Only Frank could look at a thing like this and read something dirty into it, when it’s just… what it is. It’s just how much they both need something human. Hawk doesn’t even have his shirt off. It’s not any dirtier than when Hawkeye’d held his hand for a second, and there was nothing about that, except they both needed comfort, they both still do.

 

    Hawkeye moves to sit on Trapper’s cot once he’s done, motioning for Trapper to scoot a little, to sit between his legs. He massages his shoulders in return from there, digging in nice and firm, but never rough.

 

    “Hey, Hawk…”

 

    Hawkeye makes a sound that he figures roughly translates to ‘by all means, continue’.

 

    “You’ve got pretty good hands yourself.”

 

    “That’s what they tell me.” He says, and there’s a little bit of a playful leer returning to his voice at that, the suggestion that ‘they’ perhaps refers more to nurses than not. Not full-strength, but it’s heartening to hear, puts a little warmth back into him.

 

    The door swings open, and Frank makes one of his noises, putting a serious damper on the mood-- such as it is, but at least they were starting to relax, something it’s become a lot harder to do with Frank around, in the short time they've known him.

 

    “Hi, Frank.” Trapper sighs.

 

    “Is that so?” Frank snaps.

 

    He’s… starting to get used to the defensiveness. It’s kind of funny. At first he hadn’t thought it would be so bad. Mostly Frank seemed like one of those guys you felt a little sorry for… he had kind of an unfortunate face and a perpetually henpecked air even half a world away from the hen, but… it didn’t take him long to say something about the war, and Hawkeye’d jumped in to argue, and Frank had gotten nasty, and once that happened, Trapper had gotten nasty right back, and he doesn’t think they’re going to be making up any time soon.

 

    “What are you two degenerates doing, anyway?” Frank asks, and Trapper stiffens.

 

    “It’s called a massage, Frank. Touch? Human kindness?” Hawkeye answers. “You ought to try it sometime.”

 

    “No thank you. Seems a little un-American to me.”

 

    “Human kindness is un-American, well. You learn something new every day.” Hawkeye says, voice dark and bitter now, and Trapper loops his arm around Hawkeye’s leg.

 

    “Knock it off, Frank, we lost patients today.”

 

    “You’ll get used to it.” Frank says. It’s the wrong thing to say.

 

    “I don’t want to get used to it!” Hawkeye raises his voice. The massage pauses, but his hands are no less careful on Trapper’s shoulders than they had been. Trapper can feel the tension in him, but it doesn’t transfer through the touch. “Nobody should get _used_ to this, dammit!”

 

    “Hey, hey… ignore him.” Trapper looks up. Hawk looks down, haunted but present when their eyes meet. “If this man keeps bothering you, I’ll go and rearrange his teeth for him.”

 

    The look in his eyes softens a little. The massage starts back up.

 

    “You _brute_.” Hawk teases, and Trapper’s stomach folds in on itself a little and it’s one of the nicest things he’s felt since coming to Korea, and he doesn’t understand why one bit.

 

    Well. Maybe because it reminds him of Frankie some. Frankie used to tease him about getting into fights, some, and mostly he liked being teased, ‘cause that’s just what guys do with each other. You know you’ve got a real friend when you can rag on him. It was just once that he’d said he only got into fights to save Frankie that Frankie’d said ‘you just want me for yourself’ and he’d been frosty with him for a couple days over that. It stung to be lumped in with those guys even in jest, and he felt real dumb for sulking so much about it, but it hurt. It wasn’t even that he had to protect his masculinity-- if someone said something about him and any other guy, maybe, but it was Frankie, the only guy you could make a pass at and no one would call you funny for it, it wasn’t like that, it was just… it hurt, to be just one of those guys talking about him like some girl, instead of his friend, who’d hit one of those guys for him for stepping out of line, who didn’t expect anything from him.

 

    He hadn’t thought about that in years, that little fight. It all comes back to him now on the heels of the memory of Frankie shoving him away from some guy saying ‘easy, Killer’, and the way they’d laugh over it when a fight didn’t really start. Sometimes they’d laugh even if it did.

 

    Frankie would have liked Hawkeye a lot, he thinks. Frankie would have hated Frank, and vice versa-- those two couldn’t be less alike.

 

    He writes Louise, after he and Hawkeye break apart. Tells her about his first real hard day in the OR, and how they’d lost some real young guys, and seen things he never could have been prepared for. He doesn’t describe it at all, but he tells her it’s hell. He might be waiting a long time for whatever comforting words she might have, for his first real losses on the operating table, but at least he can tell himself they’re coming.

 

    He tells her about Hawkeye, as much as he can even put words to Hawkeye. He tells her about Frank Burns, too, and a few other people he’s starting to know okay. He tells her how much he misses her and the girls. He lets Hawkeye read it over before he sends it, self-conscious over his prose. He never really wrote love letters while they were courting.

 

    “It’s good.” Hawkeye nods, when he passes it back. He’s touched with melancholy again, but he’s smiling. “You should’ve been able to go home to her. You should’ve been able to put your feet up and mope, and have that drink, and have someone take care of you. It shouldn’t have been like this, for either of us.”

 

    “I had someone take care of me.” Trapper elbows him. “It’s not home, but…”

 

    “Yeah. Something, anyway.”

 

    “About that drink… what’s your poison?”

 

    “I don’t know. What are my options? I thought this was a dry county.”

 

    “Just name something. Or don’t. Or-- Look, if a bunch of under-educated hillbillies can do it, I think two surgeons should be able to.”

 

    Something like wonder dawns slowly across Hawkeye’s face. It _transforms_ him. Maybe it’s just the beauty of the idea getting to him, or maybe there’s just never been a face as perfect as Hawkeye’s in that moment. The shape of his smile and the light coming back up in his eyes the sudden secret to life itself. Trapper nods encouragingly and watches all the pieces fall into place.

 

    “Able to what?” Hawkeye asks, hushed, but he already knows. He already knows.

 

    “Make our own.” Trapper says anyway, because Hawk asked. Because voicing it feels good. And it’s not just about wanting to get bombed after a day like they’d just had-- or the itchy feeling as he realizes he’ll be removing ‘bombed’ from his drinking vocabulary after seeing the effects of the real thing-- it’s about having a _project_ that’s got nothing to do with the blood and guts of the OR. It’s about building something. To say they had as much as for any other reason, maybe. And yeah, it’s because crawling into a bottle had sounded pretty good by the time they were dragging themselves out of surgery.

 

    “Have you ever done it before?”

 

    “Knew a guy in college who did.”

 

    “All right, let’s.”

 

    He’s not so much aware of reaching for each other as he is aware of catching each other, of hands finding hips and elbows, of the way the laughter bubbles up between them, filling the empty holes left by the worst experience of their lives.

 

    “Disgraceful.” Frank sneers. “Just you wait, I’m telling Colonel Blake.”

 

    “Oh no, don’t do that, Frank.” Hawkeye deadpans. “What will we do? We’ll be in such trouble.”

 

    “You’re darn right you will be! Hmmph!”

 

    Trapper pulls Hawkeye in close, in the crook of his arm, they collide comfortably into each other.

 

    “Next time… next time it’s this bad, we’ll at least have a drink to come home to.”

 

    “Could take some time to get everything we need and get set up, let alone the distilling--”

 

    “The next time it’s this bad.” Hawkeye presses, and presses closer. “It just… it just can’t be as bad as today, until we’re ready for it. It just can’t be this bad every day.”

 

    He wishes he could hold him until that desperate edge left his voice for good. He’s not sure how that would help much, but nothing else feels all that much more helpful. And this is Hawkeye, his partner in crime from the moment they met, the one thing mercy gave him in all of this is Hawkeye.


	2. Hold Me Tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Distilling isn't the only diversion Trapper and Hawkeye manage to come up with-- it might not even be the best.

    “She has eyes that men adore so, and a torso even moreso…” Hawkeye sings to himself absently, as he checks over the necessary preparations. He goes in and out of it a little.

 

    Radar’s getting them the equipment bit by bit. For now, they’ve got a stove, they’ve got a pot, they’ve got yeast, they’ve got a hell of a lot of corn and barley, and they’ve got jars. By the time they can get the still itself built, he figures they’ll have something ready to run through it.

 

    “Water hot enough?”

 

    Hawkeye shrugs. “If it’s not, I’m not sure this stove is going to get it any hotter. Boldly onward with the experiment, everybody in the pool.”

 

    “Stand by to stir.” Trapper hefts the sack of corn up, pouring it into the pot. “Look, I know Blake didn’t take Frank real seriously before, but once we’ve actually got a whole operation running… you think he’s going to look the other way?”

 

    “Henry? He’s a pussycat.” Hawkeye shrugs, stirring. “Nah, he’s not going to stop us.”

 

    “Hawk, _nobody’s_ gonna stop us. The question is do we get to do it here or do we have to find a cave somewhere to hide all our stuff, that’s all.”

 

    “No, we’ve gotta do it right here. Frank’s just going to have to put up with it, the army’s got bigger things to worry about than telling us what we can’t do on our own time.”

 

    “Sure. Like which laws not to break.”

 

    “Trapper, I think you’ll find that Uncle Sam has only banned moonshining in the United States. We’re in Korea. Now, there are plenty of other laws that would be very, very fun to break that the army might give us a stern talking-to about, but as far as I know, no one’s ever put a regulation on the books about whether or not you can make gin in your tent.”

 

    “Gin, huh?”

 

    “I just have a feeling about this one.” He tilts his head to one side, hand resting over his stomach. “But if you wanted a little bourbon…”

 

    “Oh, as long as it’s eighty proof, I don’t care what it is.” He plays along, with his own hand joining Hawkeye’s, holds the smile as long as he can before they both dissolve into laughter.

 

    “We can always try for another.” Hawkeye bats his lashes, fighting back an _undignified_ cackle.

 

    “You’re going to be a wonderful mother.” Trapper nods. He’s losing his own battle, the whole thing is ridiculous, and the fact that they’re doing this has him giddy, and it’s been a blessedly casualty-free day…

 

    He’s on the verge of something, some bit of theatre, some continuation of the gag, when the door bangs open and Frank barges in, and that stops him short. He’s not sure why it does-- they joke around all the time whether Frank’s barging in or not. Sure, Frank would have something to say about their being degenerates, but what makes that so different from every other day? He thinks Hawkeye’s a communist sympathizer just for being a pacifist, and he thinks he’s a pervert for having a perfectly normal eye for the nurses. Trapper’s mostly just lumped in, at this point. He’ll talk about the nurses, do a little light flirting, but he hasn’t really tried to get anywhere.

 

    He knows he’s supposed to. Night before he left, Louise said if he hadn’t found anyone back home, then he might as well try in Korea, he might as well not be lonely. She’s an angel, and he doesn’t begrudge her whoever she moves into their bed while he’s gone. He’s not being replaced, after all, just… filled in for, on the one thing. But as long as someone’s filling in for him, he figures it ought to be somebody good. Handsome, ‘cause she deserves it, at least as handsome as he is or what’s the point? Well, maybe there are some guys who aren’t so easy on the eyes who know what they’re doing in the sack, but if she’s got to look at him, he ought to be handsome.

 

    Problem is, as far as he can tell, Louise’s general type when it comes to men is just… him. But there’s got to be someone else out there. A man with really good hands. Tall. Charming smile. Just… someone good for her, for this.

 

    Frank manages to go to his bunk and get whatever he came in for, before he can no longer resist the urge to stick his nose in-- and to snap Trapper out of his thoughts.

 

    “What are you two getting up to, hmm?”

 

    “Hi, Frank.” They sigh in unison.

 

    “What a thing to say to a guy! What’s this?”

 

    “It’s creamed corn, Frank. Mother’s recipe.” Trapper says.

 

    “I don’t believe you. You’re up to something!”

 

    “I’m hurt!” Hawkeye’s hand flutters to his heart. Trapper steps back in and puts an arm around his shoulder in mock defense.

 

    “Apologize to this sensitive flower!” He demands in jest, and Hawkeye plays it up a little, turning in towards him, bringing a hand to his brow.

 

    “Sensitive flower…” Frank sneers, and there’s something about his tone that sets Trapper’s teeth on edge.

 

    “You wanna take this outside, Frank?” He steps forward, nothing humorous left in his tone.

 

    “Whoa, Trap…” Hawkeye’s hand lands on his chest, steady, and he lets it hold him back, satisfied with the way Frank startles backwards.

 

    “Next time I’m popping you one in the mouth. Maybe the swelling’ll make it look like you have lips.”

 

    “Trapper.” Hawkeye’s voice is low in his ear, and he takes a step back. The hand on his chest remains, until Frank scurries off with a whimper about going to the Colonel. “What was that about?”

 

    “Didn’t like his tone.” He grumbles darkly, watching the door a moment yet.

 

    “Look, not that I don’t swoon over the he-man act just like the next girl, but come on… You don’t need to defend me. Not from Frank Burns, at any rate. And you hitting him is gonna be something Henry can’t ignore. And we could lose what we’re working on here…”

 

    “Sorry, Hawk, it’s… I’m used to it, I guess. I’m used to tougher bullies than Frank. And I’m used to looking out for guys who needed it-- I didn’t mean I thought you couldn’t take care of yourself or nothing, I’m just used to it. And that guy, he just gets to me.”

 

    “Yeah, he gets to me, too, but you and me, we just get to him right back, that’s how I see it.”

 

    “I’m listening.” He says, and Hawkeye’s arm comes up around him.

 

    Frank’s not in the room, but Hawkeye still leans up to whisper in his ear. The visions of mischief Hawkeye spins send a little thrill through him.

 

    “Hey, Hawkeye… if you’re getting the glue and I’m getting the broomstick, who’s stirring the corn?”

 

    “Dammit…” He hisses, rushing back to the pot and stirring rapidly to make up for lost time. “How important do you think this phase is, in the grand scheme of things?”

 

    “We’ll live. We’ll live. Just stabilize the patient and give it a minute before you drop the heat.”

 

    He takes over for him, towards the tail end of the constant stirring, to keep it babysat between steps, and Hawkeye makes a circuit around the tent just to stretch his legs.

 

    “So, tell me about the cute little number you were with last night.” He says, breaking the quiet.

 

    “Wish there was something to tell.” Trapper shrugs.

 

    “No! All over you the way she was, and she wouldn’t go all the way once you got her in the supply tent?”

 

    He can feel himself blushing. “She wasn’t the problem. She, uh… It was my first time stepping out on my wife. Didn’t really go through with it.”

 

    “Ah.” Hawkeye nods. “No, that’s-- good for you, I mean… fidelity, that’s such a rare thing in this world.”

 

    Trapper dumps the malted barley in and covers the pot, moving to collapse onto his cot. He rolls onto his side, where he won’t have to deal with being looked at. Hawkeye might look at him, but he won’t have to deal with it.

 

    “No, really.” Hawkeye follows him, sitting down on the ground just beside. “I mean it, I think marriage is something no man should tear asunder all willy-nilly.”

 

    “Ain’t you always after that Dish?”

 

    “She’s not married yet.”

 

    Even without looking at him, he knows he’s bobbing his eyebrows at that…

 

    “If that makes all the difference.” He shrugs. He doesn’t really like it, the whole thing with Hawkeye going after this girl so hard. On account of she’s got a guy she’s going to marry, and what if he gets in too deep with her? She’s not leaving this fiance she’s got lined up, not over some wartime tumble. He’s just asking to get hurt if he really likes her, and if he doesn’t really like her, then he might as well go with someone else, and suppose things went wrong in a half a dozen other ways? Doesn’t seem worth it to him when she’s not any prettier than any other nurse.

 

    “Makes enough of one.”

 

    “Hawk… you want to know a secret?” Trapper rolls over, finding his eyes. “Louise and me, we… She don’t mind if I do it. She told me I ought to.”

 

    “She wants you to sleep around?”

 

    “I mean… I’m gonna be over here, and she’s back there. And she’s allowed to, too, so long as she don’t get knocked up or nothing while I’m overseas! Fair’s fair, she’s allowed to, so long as my girls don’t call no one else ‘daddy’, so long as-- you know? So long as it’s just about scratching an itch and not feeling so lonely, I figure if I can do it, she can do it, and we got an arrangement in place about it. I just… haven’t done anything about it yet. Feels weird having permission. But you know, we gotta… we gotta act like she don’t want me sleeping around none and I don’t want her doing it, we gotta-- ‘Cause that’s normal. And you got all these people-- like Burns!-- who just want to be able to prove there’s something wrong with you. Everyone’s all… hopped up about what other people are doing in the bedroom and whether it’s normal, so you know. We pretend we’re normal.”

 

    “Wow.” Hawkeye looks at him a long moment, with nothing short of wonder. “Trapper, you married one in a million there.”

 

    “Don’t I know it! I just wish I could take advantage of it, I keep getting guilty, gives me cold feet.”

 

    “I’ll lend you an extra pair of socks. Just promise you won’t do anything I wouldn’t do in ‘em.”

 

    “No thanks, I’ve seen what you do in your socks.” Trapper says, and Hawkeye slaps his thigh, laughing like a hyena. “Here-- hang on a sec, I ever show you a picture?”

 

    He shakes his head. “Just of the kids.”

 

    “Okay, hang on.” He rummages around, finds where he’s got one tucked away, Louise with Kathy, sitting on a blanket on the beach and holding her up to help her walk. “There-- that’s her.”

 

    Hawkeye lets out a whistle.

 

    “She’s something, right?”

 

    “Trapper, can I follow you home after the war? I think I’m in love with your wife. I don’t eat much and I’ll fit right across the foot of your bed.”

 

    “Yeah, yeah, wiseguy.” He shoves at him a little, puts the photo back with the others, tries to act like he thinks you’re supposed to when you and a buddy are joking around like this, except he doesn’t really know how to joke around about your best friend wanting to sleep with your wife.

 

    He doesn’t know how to joke around about your best friend wanting to sleep with your wife when thinking about it sends a rush of heat down between his legs. He knows what Hawkeye looks like when he’s on the make with a girl, how he kisses. He knows what he looks like in the buff, they shower together. He knows how skilled his hands are, in a more practical and unromantic sense.

 

    He’d be _good_. That’s what she deserves, isn’t it? He’d be so good, and he’d be… _moving_ like that, in bed with a woman, in bed with Louise, he doesn’t quite know how to picture any other woman and he’s not really sure he wants to. But he can picture Hawkeye, he can picture what he’d do, how he’d be.

 

    For just a moment, not even a moment, he imagines it’s _him_. Him, lying pliant under Hawkeye, and if that isn’t… if that’s not just…

 

    “It’s going to be really good to get this gin mill of yours set up.” He groans, running a hand over his face.

 

    “Mine? I believe this was your idea.”

 

    “The mill was my idea, the gin was yours. Does it matter?”

 

    “No.” Hawkeye smiles, he can hear the smile. He doesn’t look, rests his arm across his eyes and tries not to think about what Hawkeye could possibly be doing to him in that split second of unbidden fantasy. “That’s why we’re such a good team.”

 

    “The best there is.” Trapper agrees, feeling a little guilt gnawing at his guts over it. You didn’t picture your buddy like that, shouldn’t even on accident. If they were off someplace where there actually weren’t women around, maybe it’d be different, but he hasn’t been in Korea two weeks yet and there’s nurses all over, he’s got no excuse for looking at Hawkeye like that.

 

    Maybe they’ve been spending too much time together, only the idea of spending any less time with him is unthinkable. Besides, it’d be a hell of a thing to explain, wouldn’t it? It would just be a _fucking_ hell of a thing. ‘Sorry, Hawk, I know we’ve been keeping each other sane in this place, but you see, when you made a harmless crack about falling in love with my wife, it turned me on a little too much, so you see how this is awkward for me’, he can’t say that.

 

    “What’s the matter?” Hawkeye nudges at him.

 

    “Nothing.”

 

    Hawkeye hums skeptically. Trapper feels so suddenly _aware_ of the way they still touch, so suddenly aware that it’s not unusual for them. Hawkeye’s arm just resting against his ribs like it’s nothing, and five minutes ago it would have been, but now it’s something and he doesn’t know _what_.

 

    “Really, it’s nothing.”

 

    “Sure.” Hawkeye’s tone makes it very clear that he doesn’t believe him. After a long silence on Trapper’s part, he lets out a sigh, nudging at him again and ruffling his hair. “Come on. Let it out, you’ll feel better.”

 

    “Nothing to say.”

 

    “It’s me.” He says, voice heavy, and Trapper feels a moment of panic-- how could he _know_?-- before Hawkeye continues. “Look, if I crossed a line, you can tell me. I shouldn’t have joked about your wife, arrangement or no arrangement. Just tell me if I go too far on a joke, don’t sulk over it if I owe you an apology, I mean, I’ll apologize any time I owe you one. Would you look at me? Because I’m not wasting my heartfelt apology on your elbow.”

 

    Trapper uncovers his face, blinking at him-- mostly because of the light, a little bit because he’s confused.

 

    “You don’t owe me any apologies, pal.”

 

    “You sure?”

 

    “Yeah.” He lets his hand fall to Hawkeye’s shoulder, squeezing. “If you ever cross a line talking about my wife, believe me, you’ll know about it. Nah, it ain’t that. Maybe I’ve just been away from home too long, that’s all. I mean… since I _met_ her, we’ve never been apart more than a couple of days before now. And I never been away from my girls before at all…  maybe I’ve just got my head screwed on wrong missing home.”

 

    “Sure.” Hawkeye nods, and this time there’s no disbelief, even though Trapper’s leaving out some things. “Never been so far from home… sure.”

 

    “Don’t mind me if I get quiet sometimes, okay? I promise it ain’t ever gonna be your fault. It’s just how I am.”

 

    “Okay. Don’t mind me if I never am?”

 

    “Okay.” He smiles at that, a real one. “I’m counting on it.”

 

    “Sure. We’re the perfect team, after all.” Hawkeye catches his hand, when it slips away from his shoulder, holds it a moment. “I’m going to go stir the pot.”

 

    “That sounds like something you’d do.”

 

    He lets out a bark of laughter at that, and gets to his feet. Trapper watches him check on the corn mash.

 

    And all of a sudden, everything’s fine again. He’s just… _Hawkeye_. People get weird thoughts sometimes and it doesn’t mean anything. What means something is that this is his friend, that they’re doing this thing together, that they’re in this whole damn war together.

 

    He gets up to join him, though there’s not much to do at this stage but wait.

 

\---/-/---

 

    A couple more weeks into the horrible mess that is Korea, and they’ve got the still set up, and a lot more, besides. Things shipped to them from home, other things bought and traded for, they’ve made the place real livable. Well… livable enough. The swamp, now an official title, in that they’ve painted it on the door. They’ve taken a local kid in under their collective wing, given him a job. They’ve mostly figured out how to make it through the hard days.

 

    The nights are different. Ever since that first awful day when the losses just kept mounting no matter how fast or how well they worked, he’s had nightmares, and he gets them still. So far, nothing keeps them at bay. Drinking a lot, drinking a little, not drinking at all before bed, there’s no amount of booze or no booze that seems to matter. No activities that seem to help, though they’ve come up with a few diversions.

 

    He’s chased a few girls-- and there are a couple who enjoy the flirting and the dancing and the knowledge that at the end of the night he’ll squirm and apologize and mention his wife, he’s figured out which nurses want a little bit of a good time but don’t want to really take a lover. Eventually, the right one will come along, someone he feels good about pursuing, but until then, it’s one more distraction just to flirt.

 

    Anyway, Frank doesn’t seem to have any compunctions about stepping out on his wife, for all his talk about decency and the bible. It gets him out of the way, sometimes, though, which makes it easier to work on brewing without his glares and his noises and his pointed comments.

 

    “You ever dance?” He asks, lounging on his cot while the pot on the stove simmers, music playing over the camp PA system.

 

    “I’ve been known to cut a rug.”

 

    “That’s how you got banned from that showroom.”

 

    “You asking?” Hawkeye rises from his own slump across his own cot.

 

    “Yeah. Sure.” Trapper gets to his feet, extending a hand. There’s a slight collision, when they both go to lead, before Hawkeye acquiesces.

 

    “Next time I lead.” He says.

 

    “Next time you ask me first.”

 

    “Oh, he who asks leads?”

 

    “Yeah. If you’re asking, you’re the guy. I can’t believe you don’t know this.”

 

    “At least we’re not going by height, I’d have to invest in a pair of heels to get a turn…”

 

    “Honey, you put on a pair of heels and you won’t be leading.” Trapper laughs.

 

    “Maybe not, but they’ll do wonders for my calves.” He shrugs-- as if his legs need any help. They might not be spectacular but there’s nothing wrong with them. “It had to be you, it had to be you…”

 

    “I’ve wandered around, and finally found somebody who… could make me be true, could make me be blue…” Trapper picks up the crooning along, and Hawkeye falls silent, his head resting on Trapper’s shoulder.

 

    It’s… comfortable. Not that he’d mind letting Hawkeye lead, if he does ask next time. But his head is just heavy enough against Trapper’s shoulder, and his hand is cool-- not cold, but cool, and dry, and just soft enough. Big, the way it fits his own, not feminine, not like dancing with a nurse, or with his wife. Just as comfortable as dancing with his wife, though. And his back warm under Trapper’s other hand, his bathrobe soft… and underneath that, he imagines he’d feel bony, how skinny he is, but warm… touching him, he’d be warm, skin smooth…

 

    Skin?

 

    Shirt, he’s wearing a shirt under his robe, there’s no reason why he ever wouldn’t be-- not while dancing. Outside of giving each other any necessary physicals to spare themselves having to deal with Frank, there’s no reason why he’d have his hands on Hawkeye’s naked back. His naked anything. He’s just used to seeing him naked, he guesses. Not all the time-- not necessarily naked. But in the showers and lounging around in his underwear with his robe open and all that, it’s not like it’s hard to picture him in any state of undress. Doesn’t mean anything.

 

    Anyway, he’s nice to dance with. Fits right up against him, feels nice in his arms. And why not? They work well together at everything else. Why shouldn’t they be good at this? Why shouldn’t it be nice? Why shouldn’t he enjoy dancing, he’s always enjoyed dancing, he might as well like dancing with his best friend as with anybody else.

 

    “You come here often?” Hawkeye sighs.

 

    “Yeah, just about every night.”

 

    “How come you’ve never asked me to dance before?”

 

    “Just shy, I guess.” He laughs.

 

    “Hold me close, you big lug.”

 

    “How much closer am I supposed to hold you?”

 

    He does anyway. Rests his head against Hawkeye’s and feels him settle further, another sigh warm against his neck. Comfortable.

 

    He pulls away when the door swings open, his face hot, and Frank spends a long moment looking between them before he gives up on figuring out what they’d just stopped doing.

 

    “You know, it’s not suspicious if you don’t stop.” Hawkeye whispers, leaning up against him shoulder to shoulder, just facing the opposite way from him. “If we keep doing it, it can’t be _wrong_ , or we’d quit.”

 

    “I went to Catholic school, when a door opens, I stop doing everything fun.” He shrugs, relaxing back into a smile when Hawkeye laughs.

 

    “Fun, huh?”

 

    “‘S why I asked.”

 

    “Well, sure. I had fun, myself. We should do it again sometime.” Hawkeye bumps into him, and Trapper slings an arm around his shoulders without thinking about it. Across his chest, with how they’re faced, and Hawkeye leans into it.

 

    “Oh, sure, all you have to do is ask.”

 

    “We should do it again sometime.” Hawkeye repeats, and there’s something about the smile that he turns on Trapper that he doesn’t understand, some thought swirling around in his brain that Trapper can’t read. In the relatively short time they’ve known each other, he’s gotten very good at reading those thoughts. This…

 

    He could kiss him. His mouth is right there, that little smile, that look in his eyes not very different from the playful looks he gives the nurses, and it would be so easy to lean in and just do it. It’s not that he _wants_ to, that would be a crazy thing to want. It’s just that it would be easy, because they’re standing so close, and because… Because it would drive Frank apoplectic, doing a thing like that right in front of him. It wouldn’t be a real kiss, obviously it wouldn’t be a real kiss, it would be a joke, they’d laugh about it and then they’d tell Henry it was just a gag, when Frank went to him trying to get them kicked out of the army. Hawkeye would probably say something about how neither of them _wanted_ to be here, and then they’d say no, of course they didn’t want to go like _that_ , and they’d remind Henry about all the girl-chasing they did and Trapper would point out he’s got kids, you know, with his wife, so there’s no way he could be, no way he could have actually _wanted_ to kiss his best friend. Not like that, anyway.

 

   He doesn’t kiss him, but Hawkeye must read in his own thoughts some hint of wanting to cheese Frank off, the way the twinkle in his eye brightens, the way he smiles just that little bit more.

 

   “Later, darling.” He pats Trapper’s shoulder, leaves his side to check on the pot on the stove again.

 

   “Why do you let him call you that?” Frank scoffs, in that tone he reserves for complaining about their general degeneracy. “You’re a married man!”

 

   “Yeah, so’re you, but I see you out with other majors.” Trapper shrugs, watching the way Frank’s eyes bug out. He sort of replies, but not in any words in any language Trapper knows. Unless maybe ‘offended weasel’ is a language. He also catches the way Hawkeye’s eyebrows climb up his forehead.

 

   “You _guys_!” He manages at last, throwing himself down at his desk to start work on another complaint.

 

   “Words hurt, Frank.” Hawkeye says, hand going to his heart. He catches Trapper’s eyes again, grinning when Trapper snickers. He takes the pot off the boil and ambles over to his chair to sprawl out.

 

   Trapper passes by on the way to his cot, lets Hawkeye hand off one of his magazines.

 

   There’s nothing actually titillating about the nudist magazines Hawkeye gets-- there’s sports stuff, and articles about general health. Clean living, funny as that seems coming from Hawkeye. But Frank, he sees the nudity and his mind goes straight to the gutter. Like they’d be thumbing through the magazines out in the open if it _was_ titillating… More of a private activity, if you’re getting something out of it.

 

   Well, theoretically. Trapper’s experience with dirty pictures is limited to those boyhood experiences of getting his hands on someone’s brother’s porn, and it was always a group of them passing it all around. Once he started going with Louise he figured there was no point bothering with pictures, and even when they weren’t really going at it, he didn’t see a whole lot of point to it, pornography. But once you’re an adult, he figures if you do see a point to it, you want to see to that point on your own, with a closed door. Or at least under your blankets with a flashlight, keeping as quiet as possible.

 

   And Hawkeye will say lascivious things about co-ed nude volleyball, but when he’s flipping through his magazines, Trapper sees his eyes scanning the page like he’s reading all the articles, and even when he is appreciating a comely participant, there’s no sign of arousal at play.

 

   “After the war, this is what I want to do with my life.” He says, earning an offended noise from Frank over the very idea. “Fresh air, sunshine, and as far as the eye can see, _skin_. Healthy, unscarred, unblemished. No more uniforms...”

 

   “I dunno, Hawk. Seems like it’s a lot of exercise and not a lot of drinking.”

 

   “We’ll start up a spectators’ box. You know, they need good doctors in a nudist colony.”

 

   “Sure, think of the sports injuries.” Trapper winces. Although he can picture Hawkeye getting along pretty well in the environment… even with his tendency to spectate when it came to calisthenics. He’d be the laziest naturalist on earth, if the magazines are to be believed, but he’d… he’d fit.

 

   “Checking for deer ticks after those bracing hikes.” He bobs his eyebrows.

 

   “Think about what happens every time you try to fry bacon.”

 

   “I’d rather not.” Hawkeye pulls a face. Frank finally leaves in a huff, and he laughs, leaving his chair and his magazine and offering Trapper a hand. “So where’d you learn to dance, anyway, Arthur Murray?”

 

   “Sister Mary Katherine. Don’t _leer_ , if you met the sister, you wouldn’t be leering.” He lets Hawkeye pull him up to his feet-- and into Hawk’s arms. “When we were thirteen or fourteen they started pulling us out of gym a couple days a week for dance lessons. My partner was usually Frankie Harrigan.”

 

   “I didn’t know all boys’ schools had many dances.”

 

   “Well, if you played your cards right, they’d truck you out to the all girls’ school. And you can imagine we were all dying to get our hands on a real live girl.” He explains, falling into step. It’s not that hard-- because it’s Hawkeye, and because even though he hasn’t danced the girls’ part since he and Frankie quit bothering with dance lessons, he did have to learn how to follow just so Frankie could have a turn to lead-- something he doubted any of the other guys would give him, even though they sometimes scuffled over the privilege of dancing with the only boy in the room who even at fifteen would’ve looked like a girl if you just put a wig on him. At fifteen, Trapper was shaving and Frankie was only just done singing soprano.

 

   “Sure, sure.”

 

   “Of course, you had to have good behavior. And the thing about Frankie is, he was a little, uh… _feminine_ -looking, as a kid. With a real smart mouth. And me, you know, I’d follow him around and he’d mouth off to some bruiser, or he’d just be minding his own business and someone would mess with him a little? On account of how pretty he was. So then I had to do the punching.”

 

   “Oh, I see, you’ve been part of a double act before.”

 

   Trapper shrugs. “Anyway, you know. Only ever made one dance. Got into too much trouble fighting to get to go to any others. A few times I took the heat for it all so Frankie could still go. I mean, if he could hold back from trying to get in on the action, which I always told him to do, ‘cause he was _small_ next to some of us. And that way at least one of us could go and he could describe the girls to me the next day.”

 

   “Oh, at thirteen, that’s all it takes.” Hawkeye laughs. “Someone describes a girl to you and you can live off of the idea of her for a week.”

 

   “It was just as good, I think.” He laughs right along with him, too, and rests his head against Hawkeye’s, since his shoulder’s too low. “I was so used to dancing with the other guys, that when they first let us into a room full of girls and told us to have a good time, I was petrified!”

 

   “Scared stiff?” Yet again, he can _hear_ the eyebrow-waggling.

 

   “Something like that.”

 

   Hawkeye chuckles, warm, his hand sliding up from Trapper’s side to up between his shoulders, to spread out wide, to keep him pressed close… Trapper feels his pulse pick up, he can’t explain why it should, only… only what? Only he’d been thinking about Hawkeye with his wife, maybe, and then…

 

   No, that’s ridiculous. Not worth thinking about at all. He just hasn’t been held in too long, that’s all. When they’d danced earlier, it had been different, it wasn’t like being _held_ , but back home, Louise would hold him, at the end of a real long day, she’d wrap her arms around him and let him tuck into her until everything calmed down.

 

   For the first time since that awful day, that night, his sleep goes undisturbed.


End file.
